Friday, February 13, 2015

Recently I was in Chicago to audition for a summer dance intensive. Despite living rather close to Chicago, I tend to avoid it due to the hassle of driving and parking. Not to mention the high cost of parking for a short trip.

I'm used to Milwaukee, so the difference in architecture is always interesting. Since the Chicago fire wiped out most of the city's buildings, all the architecture is relatively new compared to Milwaukee.

Driving in Chicago wasn't as bad as anticipated, luckily it wasn't rush hour. As a new driver, the first thing I noticed was needing to drive more aggressively if you ever want to get anywhere and you have to be extremely alert. Pedestrians and bikers just randomly wind up in the street and sometimes the stoplights are barely visible, hidden within the supports for the El.

The roads in Chicago are definitely very different from Milwaukee as well. Along with hidden streetlights, roads in Chicago often become one-way streets so you can’t always turn where you want to and often have to jog a few blocks over.

I'm absolutely in love with big cities, and Chicago is no exception. Every time I go, I'm still mesmerized by what seems like endless buildings. It felt like I was spending more time looking up than in front of me.

You can see just from the skyscrapers that Chicago buildings are a lot newer. They look so much more modern overall, especially with many buildings that look like they’re all windows. Milwaukee buildings are almost all concrete, so while the designs are very intricate, they’re not as stupefying from a distance.

I just adore the marquee lights and the overall iconic look of the signs. We have plenty where I live, but they’re not well-kept and thus are falling apart. They’re one of the most aged-looking parts of Chicago.

This trip, I finally made it to Millennium Park. I've wanted to see the Bean for what feels like forever. It looked so perfect it was almost as if it was photoshopped in front of a Chicago skyline. Underneath, it’s barely like a mirror. Looking up at yourself it seems like you’re miles away and all sound echoes which makes it extremely difficult to hold a conversation when everyone else is trying to as well.

The bean really just screams modern. Constructed between 2004 and 2006 it’s something that would have never been built before the Chicago fire due to its complex design.

While at Millennium Park, we I got to see these interesting statues. They were all only heads- no bodies- and there wasn’t any information on them that I could find. The lack of information made them that much more ominous and interesting.

These also are extremely modern in their nature as well as style of art. They’re definitely not something that would’ve been created pre-fire.

And of course you can't miss the river at night. If there were just one thing you could see/ do in Chicago I would suggest this. It was magical with the lights reflecting and the beautiful buildings in the background.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Valentine's Day is this weekend already! 2015 is going by unbelievably quickly already, but it's great.

I actually haven't painted my nails much recently (not at all in 2015) I thought it was time for a Valentine's mani. Of course you guys get to learn how to do it too!

This is actually super easy, as long as you can do a gradient!

Start with a white base. My favorite is Sinful Colors Snow Me White. Two coats is usually needed.

Next, you'll cut a heart shape out of tape. Stick the tape on your hand a few times to keep it from being too sticky, then place it on the nail, making sure the heart is where you want it and that there aren't any air holes.

Then, go ahead and do your gradient over that. I did a three color gradient using a light pink, medium pink, and a red, but anything you like will do.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

I decided to do a follow up on our last post about Homemade valentines day cards. In the last post I told you which project I would be doing. Just in case you didn't read the last post this tutorial will be on how to make sweetart Valentine's Day cards. The cards will say you're a sweetart.

You will need to buy supplies from somewhere like Target or Walmart. I brought my supplies from Target, and it only cost around three dollars with tax. The first thing you'll need is a bag of sweet tarts candy. They come in many varieties of pack sizes, so you will need to choose the one that will best fit the amount you will need for your project. You also need a sharpie, tape, and the option of other Valentines. You may also want to get something to transport them in if your bringing them to school or work.

The first thing you should do is open the bag and dump them into a pile. If you do this then after you complete one, you can put it in a separate pile and it is easier to keep track of which ones are done. After you do this you're going to want to get all of your other supplies out. Once you do this you are ready to begin the process of making your homemade valentines.

Now, take your bag of Sweet tarts and right above the word sweetheart, write you are a, and then it will be right above sweetart. It will read out you are a sweet tart. Next, you're going to want to take and cut a piece of tape. If you have another valentine you're going to want to tape it to your Valentine that you just made. If you don't have another valentine just write who it's from and you have the option of writing who it is to as well.

You're almost done. All you have to do is continue this until all of your valentines are done. Then, put your completed valentines in a bag and wait until Valentine's Day to see the bright smiling faces reading your homemade valentines. Happy Valentine's Day!

Friday, January 30, 2015

I'm turning 16 on Wednesday, which still seems so surreal to me. I honestly don't feel 16, sometimes with dance my body feels about 96, but that's unrelated. So yeah... Weird.

There really isn't anything I need this year. Usually I'm low on something like socks or maybe I have no long sleeve shirts. But, nothing this year.

I could always use more leotards, especially dancing 6 days a week. I'm not interested in doing laundry THAT often. I really like this one with mesh!

I've been reading SO MUCH lately. I'm at the library often, so I can always borrow books. However, I love having my own so much more. It's nice to take notes in books and then I can loan them to people too. I would really like all the Lunar Chronicles in hardcover (even though I've already read them & Fairest which is so good (review to come on that one)). I've also been very interested in contemporary lately, so both of Huntley Fitzpatrick's titles would be great too. Most of my Amazon wishlist is full of books I want.

The last thing I would like is a new laptop. Mine is only about 4 years old, but it runs horribly. The fan is constantly running really hard (not that it's doing much, most days it seems like it would fry an egg) and very very loudly. It's also getting slower and slower which is incredibly frustrating for school work as well as blogging. I honestly have no clue what kind of laptop I want, but I'm really not interested in spending $1,300 on one right now so we'll see I suppose.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Valentine's Day is almost here. If you go to the stores they want like $5 for 20 cards. I know I'm exaggerating a bit but wouldn't you rather just making your own for more like three dollars? I know I would. That's what I'm doing this year- here's a few ideas on how you can do it too.

For the first idea, all you need is sweetheart candy class pack, a sharpie, and some creativity. This is the idea I chose for my Valentines. All you do is write "You're a" in sharpie above the word sweetheart and walla!: you're done. It's probably the easiest idea out of all of them and it only takes about five minutes to complete 32 of them.

For the second idea all you need is heart shaped marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate, a sharpie, and cute bags to put them in. On the bag put "You melt my heart". This idea takes a little bit longer but is very cute for young ages. I thought about doing this one but did not want to worry about allergies in my class. This idea is also a little bit more expensive around $10 or maybe even a little more.

For the last idea all you need is Starburst, bags to put them in, and a sharpie. All you need to do is put the Starbursts in the bags and then right on the bags "Hope your Valentine's Day is bursting with happiness". This is probably in the middle of the two money-wise.

I hope you didn't enjoyed these Valentines ideas- I know I did. They are all pretty easy for young children to help make, are cute ideas that don't cost too much money, and mean even more because you made them from the heart. I hope you'd like one of these ideas and one of them can save you money this Valentine's Day. Thanks a lot for reading this, and I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

With a goal of reading 75 books this year, I've got a lot of reading to do! Luckily it's one of my favorite pass-times.

I started to get into Morgan Matson's books with Since You've Been Gone. I'd seen it A LOT on Tumblr, but up until recently I'd really avoided YA Romance as best as I could. I'm so glad I've begun reading it, though. Let's go chronologically through her books though, yes?

I've always really fancied the idea of a cross-country road trip with friends, and I think that's probably why I loved this book so much. Amy Curry's father has recently died. Her mom is living on the East Coast, and she is still in California finishing up school! Now that school is over, her mom wants her to bring the car to the East Coast. One problem: she hasn't driven since her father died.

Enter Roger. He and Amy were friends when they were younger, but they haven't talked in well over a decade. He's going to the East Coast anyway, so he'll just drive Amy and the car over. Driving across the country with a practical stranger. . . nothing awkward about that.

Along the way Amy and Roger steer pretty far off Amy's mom's planned route and learn a lot about each other.

Sounds like a completely cliche YA romance novel featuring a road trip. Which, in a way it kind of is. But, I felt there was so much more depth to it than that. The plot had a good pace, always advancing and never too slow. I felt Matson's writing was excellent as well. Amy sounded like a teenager. Recently, most of the novel's I've read with a teenage narrator sound 12, instead of 17. This wasn't the case at all.

I absolutely loved this and would definitely appreciate a short novella about Amy and Roger after the book.

This was another rather cliche YA Romance.[Girl has problems. Girl likes boy. Confusion about boy. Boy likes girl. Yay they're together. Girl needs to deal with problems and pushed boy away. Boy is angry. They get back together before the end. (hide spoiler)]

The story itself wasn't amazing honestly. Definite tear-jerker, but that was anticipated. Her writing style is definitely amazing though, so that and the Amy & Roger cameo is why I've given it 4 stars.

One day Sloane just disappears. Emily and Sloane are practically attached at the hip so she is incredibly worried when she still hasn't heard from Sloane. Then a letter shows up with a list of things to do. Emily would have never thought to do most of these and is convinced she just might not. But, without Sloane Emily starts to get lonely and thinks doing all of the things on the list will bring her back.

I enjoyed it overall, and I think it's nice to have some predictable, just fun reads in between books that make you really think.

I received this next book from a Tumblr giveaway, along with Love Letters to the Dead and I'll Give You the Sun.

Wow. Best book I've read so far this year. (Not that I've many to compare it to yet.)

After reading reviews and such I expected a plot twist (I mean it's called We Were Liars). But I just kind of accepted the first one, no big deal. Then there was the second one that changed everything. Yeah. Excellent.

I feel like all of these characters had quite a lot of depth. Probably the best written characters I've experienced in a while. Though all the liars are around 17, they talk like they're about 12 which makes a lot more sense later on.

I really really really liked this style of writing. The random prose was excellent, as well as the small fairy tale re-tellings.

If you get the opportunity to do so, I would absolutely suggest reading this book. So, so good.

Would you ever be interested in participating in a "book club" of sorts? The books would generally be non-fiction, female empowering.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Rather recently, (not that recently in the grand scheme of our life) we discovered our love of tea. I think we both kind of avoided it since we weren't huge coffee fans.

We even made this strange YouTube video with the process of making tea when we first started liking it. . . almost 2 years ago.

Not only is tea great it also has some major health benefits (and energy benefits if you go for caffeinated tea). Of course, there are lots of different kinds of tea, which means they have their own features. We're going to start with green.

Cheerios can step aside! Studies show green tea is able to lower cholesterol and prevent many heart related issues. Just don't load it up with too much sugar!

Ever find yourself walking into a room just to forget why? Well green tea can help. A Swiss study showed that people who drank green tea had greater activity in the working-memory area of their brain.

Though there is no evidence yet that green tea kills cancer cells, it is known to help healthy cells in all different stages.

After a long day working, it's nice to unwind. But, coffee just gets you wound up and then you can't sleep! Drinking tea helps you relax, because of a natural chemical called theanine. However, make sure you are just heating your water to the temperature you want it- no need to get it boiling. Boiling the water for brewing tea will get rid of theanine's effect.

In the winter, it seems like everyone is sick. Sure you can spray Lysol on everything, BUT THERE'S A BETTER WAY I SWEAR. Catechins, found in green tea have been known to have a major positive effect on your immune system. Of course adding lemon gets you some extra vitamin C for that immune system as well. That way you can stay healthy all through flu season!

It's a known fact that literally no one likes getting breakouts. No one. The antibacterial properties of green tea are known to fight off acne and the anti-inflammatory properties reduce swelling and redness.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Today, the Vice President of Business Development of Leeward Business Advisors is here discussing inbox management.

Your E-Mail Inbox is Literally Killing You

A number of recent studies have shown that sitting can
shorten your life expectancy. According the University of Queensland an hour of
idle time can shave 22 minutes off your life. Common task management
inefficiencies is allowing email to rob you of 3.6 years of your life.

The top task management mistakes of processing email are:

Repeating the same task

Spending time on a task that does not have value

Working on the wrong tasks at the wrong time

You are probably guilty of all three.

Repeating the Same Task

You read the message preview and decide it doesn’t need
immediate attention, so you keep scrolling. By the end of the week, you’ve
spent two hours scrolling past the same unread emails. You are now 44 minutes
closer to death.

Finally when you open the email and start to read it, the
meeting reminder pops up (squirrel!). You close the email to deal with later.
Another two hours of your life gone to rereading the same messages. One hour
and twenty-eight minutes closer to kicking the bucket.

Tasks without Value

The end of the week approaches and your unread email count
(meaning the count of emails you have read several times, but reverted to
unread so you could deal with them later) tips past 100 messages. You shut out
the world around you and settle in to crank out some replies. The first half an
hour is lost to deleting duplicate and triplicate emails. The next half hours
goes to clearing out the ‘reply all’ storm on a subject that isn’t even
applicable to you. At this point you notice your rear is going numb, but you
fail to think about tallying up the one hour and fifty minutes these messages
are subtracting from your life.

Wrong Task Wrong Time

You pause to revel in the solid progress you’ve made in just
one hour. That is, a solid hour of deleting messages you have already spent four
hours scrolling past and re-reading. Suddenly, you read the next message. Your
pulse raises and a droplet of sweat forms on your brow. You remember reading
this one on Monday, from your boss, and it’s about that thing that is due
before the end of the week. Email processing is now at a full stop as you
scramble to meet the deadline for your boss.

Luckily you have all weekend to sit on the couch and clear
out your inbox while binge watching Game of Thrones, multi-tasking your way to
the next level of Candy Crush Saga. Eight more hours reading email whilst
firmly planted on your derriere.

Death by Email

Thirteen hours of rump numbing email reading has carved
nearly 5 hours off your life expectancy this week. Keep it up over the course
of your career and you are knocking 429 days off of your twilight years.

…Stay tuned. In our next post we will share four steps to
get email under control and add time back to your life.

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

We remember always having to do those annoying projects for school where you have to interview your family, but the questions were never any good. So, we decided to interview our great grandmother, but this time ask our own questions.

C & K: What is your full name?

Jacqueline Marie Farella-err wrong answer- Gibson

C & K: What is your earliest memory?

Oh lord! Climbing up the stairs of my grandmother's house. This was in Chicago

C & K: What is your favorite memory with Cassandra and Kaitlyn?

When Kaitlyn was a baby. She was really cute. And she pinched Cassese. He was 1 and she was 2. Wait no. She was 1 and he was 2. Sitting side by side and she pinched him and he screamed!

And Cassandra. I remember that there was 2 babies. Angie was born first. Cassandra looked like a baby doll and Angie was the momma doll. They were the cutest babies! I never had an ugly baby.

C & K: Tell us about your ancestors.

Which one do you want to know about? Your great great grandfather Don Pape Cassese? Great-great-great? He was very tall. Good looking That's who CJ is named after. It was always a last name, never a first. Such a beautiful name.

C & K: What did you enjoy most about having the bakery?

Oh that it closed! There was a lot of beautiful memories because the kids were all there. [What was your least favorite memory?] I wish I could've been home more with my daughter who couldn't be there with her allergy.

C & K: If you could visit anywhere, where would it be? Why?

I would rather be just where I'm at because my children are all here.

C & K: If you could share only one piece of advice with girls our age what would it be?

Oh no drugs. Definitely. Sex, that's okay. Well, not for them. Don't ever be afraid of sex. Sex is not the worst thing. Drugs are the worst thing. Once you get to 18 and start drinking, [The drinking age is 21. . .] Oh yeah, 21. Well, you don't want to over drink.

We had so much fun interviewing our grandmother with our own questions. We're just happy to be able to learn so much from her.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

I feel a bit torn about this book, but I really really did like it overall.

This book is comprised of letters, written by Laurel, a high school freshman, writes to her different idols. All of whom are dead.

I read Love Letters to the Dead back in December. I found the writing similar to Ketchup Clouds. However, I think this novel did a much better job of actually using the letters and working them into the story as well. It was evident that writing these letters really did help Laurel.

On the subject of her sister’s death, I was honestly expecting a larger reveal. (Another similarity to Ketchup Clouds) Laurel blames herself for her sister’s death, when there really wasn’t anyway she could’ve prevented it. I think this is huge, because in real life, people go through the same thing. I’m sure so many families who had a loved one die in 9/11, or anything really, always think it was their fault, “If I only I hadn’t let them go into work that day.” It’s still not their fault, but they feel like they had some way to prevent it, but there was no way of knowing what outcome that would lead to.

I also feel the delicacy at which the lesbian relationship is handled is incredibly important. It isn’t made out to be a big deal- Laurel doesn’t really think anything of it. I feel like most authors just put queer characters in their book as a punch line or for the sake of diversity, often without even flat out saying they’re not straight. This didn’t feel like either. There weren’t just hints of their sexuality; it was all there, laid out in plain sight. Often times, it also seems like books with queer characters spend the whole time trying to learn to accept themselves. Although, it is important to discuss the problems that sometimes arise when a teen comes out, in terms of being accepted, this wasn’t the only thing discussed about their relationship. There was a lot of focus on the fact that the girls needed to love and accept themselves before they could come out in the open as together and I think that was extremely important, however there was more depth to their relationship than that.

At times, I feel like Laurel talked and acted a lot younger than she really is. However, I feel at the same time that is how a teenager who lost an older sibling would act. This is especially true, since her mother walked out and she can’t talk to her bible crazy aunt about stuff. While it can be a bit annoying at times, I feel this was an accurate portrayal.

I really did like this book and I’m glad I was able to read it at my age. I will definitely be suggesting it to most of my friends.

It starts off talking about different kinds of fandoms (ie. Potterheads, SuperWhoLock) and their shows/movies/books. This section obviously didn’t cover them all, but it covered most of the main ones. I felt this section was fairly accurate on the ones I knew about.

Maggs then goes through relevant lingo and I was surprised at how much I already knew. I felt the definitions were accurate as well as helpful. However, I did feel they were a bit random. I'm not sure all of them are relevant (I've never heard them) and there were some not covered people might not know.

She went into great detail on conventions. Maggs talked about a variety of cons and the fans that would want to go. There was also a lot on what to expect out of a convention- not getting to see EVERYONE, not getting a lot of sleep, etc. I think her section on what to bring was the most helpful, but that's just me. I’ve never been to a con, but the information seemed useful and I would definitely use her advice if I planned on going to one. Later, the book went over cosplay and such.

The last chapter is about feminism. It’s pretty short, but I do feel it’s an important chapter and that it does a good job of talking about feminism and its importance. I didn't expect it at all, but I'm very glad it was included. I don't think it is out of place at all especially since it is the FanGIRL's Guide to the Galaxy. Especially in a male dominated community there are a lot of problems that arise for women and I think this addresses them well.

Overall, I thought this book was really cute, and I'm already loaning it to friends.

Wow. Best book I've read so far this year. (Not that I've many to compare it to yet.

After reading reviews and such I expected a plot twist (I mean it's called We Were Liars). But I just kind of accepted the first one, no big deal. Then there was the second one that changed everything. Yeah. Excellent.

I feel like all of these characters had quite a lot of depth. Probably the best written characters I've experienced in a while. Though all the liars are around 17, they talk like they're about 12 which makes a lot more sense later on.

There really isn't much else to say other than that I absolutely loved it.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Not only did we recently finish another year of blogging, we've also had 399 posts leading up to this. We've learned a lot about blogging in the past year. We had some really great months, and some horrible months. We had some sponsorships go extremely well, and some fail miserably. Overall, I think we're both happy to have the learning opportunity and I think that's what our blog has always been about.

But of course, if we've already gone through the process of these failures, we'll share them with you. Sure, you might have a different experience, but this is just how it worked for us.

Quality over Quantity

I'm sure you've heard this before, but it's definitely applicable to blogging. Last January we posted around 40 times. Mind you, there are only 31 days in January. We were making separate posts for our link up and would often make a normal post and a Polyvore post on the same day. Our posts were pretty low quality in general, and I doubt anyone wanted to see them on their feed so often!

We suggest writing better posts, it might mean you have to take more time on it, but readers will enjoy it more thus making them more likely to return. You may only get to post a few times a week with that method, but it's worth it. As long as the content is high quality and relevant.

Life Happens

Just because you plan out a month's worth of posts, doesn't mean they're going to write and publish themselves. We would make such detailed plans for each month, but wind up getting busy. We didn't block off any time for blogging and then would up not having it! Once we missed a few posts it was easy to essentially give up for the month and stop posting. This is the worst thing to do! Now we missed a whole month of posts and likely lost a bunch of followers.

Take advantage of the scheduling feature blogger offers. We also find that just having some posts ready to go saved in drafts is nice when you were planning on writing one day, but couldn't. That will give us more cushion, and making blogging less stressful. With this, we'll be mindful about our time, and be sure to set some aside for blogging each week/

Promote, Promote, Promote

We saw a huge difference in traffic, just by tweeting about our posts more than just once. We realized that not everyone will see it the first time, so it helps to share multiple times. Sharing content created by friends of yours, or even just bloggers you admire also helps. Your followers will likely enjoy their content, if they enjoy yours. Plus it helps out other bloggers, and that's always nice!

We would suggest tweeting about all your posts. We use If-This-Then-That for the first post, and then we tweet about the post again throughout the week! When we read a post we like, we're also sure to share it then too.

Use Great Photos

Going back through old posts always makes us cringe. Surprisingly, it's not because of our dorky writing. It's mostly because of the photos. AGH! They were so bad! We've seen so much more interest in our posts once we fixed our photos. The first thing people see when they go to your blog will be photos and it takes a split second for readers to decide whether to stay or not. Often, when I'm going through my Bloglovin' feed, I only look at the photo. So if someone's photo sucks, I won't even look at the post!

We would definitely suggest using a nicer camera for photos, as opposed to an iPhone. It's also good to go through and edit the photo, even just adding text is good and makes the photo look so much nicer. Photos also work great as a sort of title for posts, so you can pretty much just type the title of the photo. (For SEO purposes try not to have your photo placed before any text!)

Have a Clear Voice

Going back through our old posts feels very strange. Sometimes we sound like teenagers. Occasionally we sound like adults. Then there's times where we sound like a business CEO. Weird huh? We're both teenagers, not adults and definitely not in charge of a major company.

When people come to our blog, it's weird for them to find us using different voices- the same way if you just walked up to your friend and talked in a different accent each day. It's confusing and readers don't get to know you! Make sure your posts sound like you- it's actually easier, anyway!

Even though there is a lot we could have done better, we aren't upset about what we did do. We've learned a lot through this and we're happy to continue to find better ways to do things. Can't wait to see where the next 400 posts bring us (hint: we've got quite the project planned for this summer!).

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

We absolutely love writing and sending letters. It feels so much more personal than a text, and it’s exciting to go to the mail box and find a surprise inside. It’s so exciting to open a letter and see that someone took the time out of their day to write to you. Texting and emailing is so easy and fast, when you write a letter you have to stop what you’re doing.

Monday, January 12, 2015

We've both had glasses for quite a long time. If you have glasses, you know the feeling of realizing you should be able to see the leaves on trees, among the other struggles of wearing glasses. So you can probably relate to at least some of these.

1. Drastic temperature changes leave you blind.

When you walk into your warm house from being out in the cold your lenses get crazy foggy. Happens with hot drinks too. You'll probably wait to see if it will return to normal, but of course it won't so you'll be forced to wipe them off. ugh

2. The rain. And snow.

When walking in the snow or rain, your glasses get covered, even if you're under an umbrella the whole time. Lens size windshield wipers would be nice. . .

3. Driving at night.

Glare. Glare everywhere. Then there's driving at night in the rain and you might as well be at a freaking laser show jeez.

4. Laying down.

Sometimes laying down is the best way to watching TV. But glasses cause this to be difficult and often painful. However, if you take your glasses off you won't be able to see the show. Then, if you accidentally fall asleep with your glasses on, they're going to be quite out of shape.

5. Taking pictures.

Even professionals can't always avoid getting the glare glasses cause with flash. Be prepared to attempt to tilt your head at every angle possible to avoid it?